Cinema: The New Pictures, Nov. 16, 1953

Kiss Me Kate (MGM) might be subtitled "The Taming of the Show." Based
on the Broadway musical based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew,
which was based on an Ariosto comedy based on an old folk tale, the
picture is pretty far off any kind of base.

The Broadway show came excitingly to life because the audience felt
itself transported through time to Shakespeare's Padua. The film merely
tries to carry the audience back to old Broadway, but somehow, at the
final curtain, it is still esthetically blundering around somewhere on
the far side...